The Internet

Ethics Quote Of The Day: Allahpundit

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"Hide! The Vice-President says that if the jobs bill doesn't pass, we might be raped!!!"

“The very first question at the next Solyndra hearing should be, “How many rapes could Democrats have prevented by giving that $535 million to cops instead?”

—“Hot Air” blogger Allahpundit, marking the below-the-belt tactics of Vice President Joe Biden, who angrily suggested that Republicans who voted against the President’s jobs bill would be responsible for rapes and murders because of the resulting inadequate numbers of police.

Biden’s fear-mongering is beyond demogoguery, whatever the virtues of the President’s bill. States make budgetary decisions, and if a state’s priorities in funding didn’t include sufficient police personnel to prevent rapes and murders, the state is accountable, not Congressional Republicans (and Democrats) who don’t like the President’s bill. Meanwhile, the jobs bill seeks $5 billion for cops (and firefighters) and $30 billion for teachers. Is Obama willing to risk more rapes by not putting more money into law enforcement and less into teacher’s unions?  Continue reading →

Introducing the Munroe Rule: “If You Teach, Don’t Denegrate Students Online; If you Denigrate People OnLine, Don’t Teach”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Viki Knox fans

I want to thank Viki Knox, the  Union Township (N.J.) high school teacher who decided to proclaim her condemnation of gays on Facebook, for making it possible for me to re-use much of an earlier post. This saves me a lot of thought and time.

That one involved Jerry Buell, a veteran high school teacher who was suspended indefinitely earlier this year by Lake County, Florida’s Mount Dora High School for posting an anti-same-sex marriage rant on his Facebook page.  In his post, prompted by New York’s decision to legalize gay marriage, Buell said that the news made him want to throw up, that gay marriage was “a cesspool,” and that homosexuality was a sin. Knox went Buell one better, going to the heart of the matter by declaring that homosexuality is a sin that “breeds like cancer” and describing it as “perverted.” She also wrote:

“Why parade your unnatural immoral behaviors before the rest of us? I/we do not have to accept anything, anyone, any behavior or any choices! I do not have to tolerate anything others wish to do.” Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is There An Ethical Obligation To Help An Actress Lie About Her Age?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

An actress who is, so far, unidentified is suing Amazon.com in federal court for over $1 million in damages for disclosing her age on its Internet Movie Database website, and refusing to remove the reference when she requested, then demanded, that it do so.

She says that IMDb misused her personal information after she signed up for the “industry insider” IMDb Pro service in 2008. Soon she saw that her legal date of birth had appeared on her online acting profile. IMDb refused to remove it.

Now, she says, she is being discriminated against in Hollywood for her age (40), as is its custom. Producers won’t hire her for younger roles, because she’s now regarded as “too old.” Yet she can’t get older roles either, because she still looks much younger. The lawsuit seeks $75,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.

Your Ethics Quiz question of the day:

Did the Internet Movie Data Base do anything unethical by publishing the actress’s real age without her permission? Continue reading →

And You Thought Natalie Munroe Was An Unethical Teacher…Well, Meet Jeremy Hollinger

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

Jeremy Hollinger, showing his compassion for his students' struggles

Remember Natalie Munroe, the teacher who blogged about how much she detested her high school students, calling them names like “rat-boy” and “jerkoff”? What, you may ask, could be more destructive to the necessary trust between teacher and student, or parents and the teacher to whom they entrust their student’s education, short of actual abuse?

How about a teacher ridiculing his grade school special ed students?

Believe it or not, that’s what Jeremy Hollinger, a Mobile (Ala.)County Public School teacher who handles a second grade special education class at the Eichold-Mertz Elementary School did on his Facebook page. (In news reports, that’s what he “allegedly” did, or “is accused of” doing. In fact, all the evidence is public, it is clear and unambiguous, and the bottom line is, he did it.) Most spectacularly, Hollinger posted a mocking picture of himself wearing a seizure helmet and making a goofy face. Among his charming jibes at the young and challenged children in his class were such satirical comments on their behavior as “I guess crayons are on the menu” and “Why is there shit on the floor?” Continue reading →

Catawba Valley Community College vs. FIRE, Free Speech and Fairness

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Wait a minute...YES! It's FIRE to the rescue!!

Will someone please  tell me what is going on with colleges and universities lately?

Has there been a collective nervous breakdown among administrators? Is the stress getting to be too much? As the walls close in, with institutions realizing that they are charging far too much for diplomas that neither signify knowledge nor enhance employability, are they abusing power in a futile effort to pretend they are in control of a deteriorating situation beyond their control? I don’t know, but thank heaven for the Foundation For Individual Rights in Education, whose mission of protecting students and academics from abusive restrictions on their rights of free though and expression on university campuses is more crucial than ever.

FIRE’s latest rescue mission was on behalf of Marc Bechtol, a student at Catawba Valley Community College in North Carolina. In June, the College announced that all students would receive a CVCC branded Debit Mastercard according to the institution’s partnership with Higher One, a financial services company. The debit card also serves as the official student ID, so there was no way to opt out of the arrangement. In order to activate his card, Bechtol and other students were required to supply their Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and student numbers. Bechtol smelled a rat, and he has a good nose: this arrangement may be legal, but it is unethical. The school is forcing students to do business with a for-profit entity that will have access to sensitive and personal data. Bechtol objected to CVCC and Higher One  marketing its checking accounts through emails to students, making claims that they would get their tuition refunds and Pell Grants faster if they opened Higher One accounts.  One such email had the subject line, “Want your refund? Activate your CVCC Onecard today!”

After Bechtol activated his own debit card, he said he received a marketing phone call from Orchard Bank, trying to get him to apply for a credit card—smoking gun evidence that his proprietary information, forced out of him by his college, was being sold to marketing firms. Annoyed, Bechtol sharply criticized CVCC’s unethical partnership with Higher One on the school’s Facebook page, writing “Did anyone else get a bunch of credit card spam in their CVCC inbox today? So, did CVCC sell our names to banks, or did Higher One? I think we should register CVCC’s address with every porn site known to man. Anyone know any good viruses to send them? …OK, maybe that would be a slight overreaction.”

One week after posting this, Bechtol was taken out of a class by the CVCC Executive Officer of Student Services and told that he would not be permitted to return. Continue reading →

The Korean President’s Dinner: President Obama, I Owe You This One

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Funny...you don't LOOK Japanese!

Having joined reflexive Obama-bashers by assuming the worst based on an unjustified reading of a leaked diplomatic cable and subsequently criticizing the White House for something it did not do, allow me to continue my contrition and repentance by flagging another example of the same phenomenon, also involving Asian diplomacy and equally unfair, being trumpeted by some of the same sources that led me astray.

The headlines: “ANOTHER WHITE HOUSE STAFF SCREWUP”  (Instapundit) …“Obama Honors South Korean President With Japanese Food” (The National Review)

Where did this come from? USA Today reported the fare for the upcoming  White House dinner honoring South Korean President Lee Myung Bak: Continue reading →

Unethical Website—and Readers— of the Month: The Spearhead

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

Ironically, the site's typical reader is better described as "The Cement Head"

I don’t want to seem ungrateful: it is usually a welcome discovery when I find a popular website sending readers to Ethics Alarms, as has been the case the last two days with a site called The Spearhead. Nor do I have any ethical objections to The Spearhead’s theoretical mission, which is to stand against “misandry,” the mistreatment, cultural denigration of and discrimination against men. The phenomenon The Spearhead and its various bloggers rail against certainly exists in the U.S., as Ethics Alarms most forcefully pointed out after ABC’s Christiane Amanpour led a male-bashing roundtable on her Sunday show and did so as if she was having her guests name the state Capitals.

Unfortunately, the tone of most of the articles on The Spearhead is decidedly paranoid, misogynist or worse, echoing the dialogue in old movies and TV comedies in which rejected (and often repulsive) men would band together in a “Woman-Hater’s Club.” Its article (“Waitress Reacts to Insult With Online Lynch Mob”) that linked to Ethics Alarms, for example, weighing in on the Victoria Liss affair in which an aggrieved waitress used Facebook to invite Internet Avengers to heap abuse on a cheap and insulting customer but carelessly fingered the wrong man, took this from the episode:

“How many men would be so petty, so vindictive, and so morally depraved that they would launch a personal vendetta over a minor slight suffered in the course of a day’s work? Very few, obviously — such men would be instantly fired, and likely castigated by the courts (if not jailed) for harassment.”

Thus Victoria, in the view of the author, isn’t merely one inept Facebook user and an unusually vindictive waitress, but a typical representative of her gender and proof of the fairer sex’s inadequacies when compared to men. This is bigotry.  But the real ugliness arrived in the comments to the article, most of which heaped abuse on Liss and hatred on women generally, condemning the waitress not only for what she did, but for her appearance. Thanks to the site’s like/dislike feature, it was  possible to gauge which of the comments were representative of the majority. The verdict does not speak well for The Spearhead. Here is a representative sample:

  • “In today’s America, it is assured one will get undeserved shit, for speaking Truth.The customer spoke truth about her fatness, and now, the fat one is the one indignant…with a crowd of supporters defending her uncontrolled behavior. America = truth avoidance”

This endorsement of gratuitous rudeness and cruelty was approved of by the readership by a margin of 56 to 9. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Follow Up and Clarification On The Hiroshima Apology Cable: I Was Wrong, I Apologize…and More”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Rick Jones, whose blog is a constant source of information, provocation and thoughtfulness, generously contributes his analysis to the botched Hiroshima apology story in this Comment of the Day.  To summarize: here and elsewhere, a Wikileaks-released diplomatic cable from 2009  prompted a stampede of mostly conservative news sources to report that President Obama had suggested the possibility of apologizing for the atom bombing of Hiroshima in World War II.  I encountered the story, tracked it in several sources that have proven reliable in the past, and commented on it, critically. About 24 hours later, a friend with impeccable diplomatic credentials and inside information properly chastised me for taking the bait, and offered conclusive evidence that the cable had been misinterpreted. You might want to read my post of last night apologizing to readers and the President that also raises the issues that Rick addresses in his Comment of the Day. I have a follow-up comment at the end:

“While I admire your acceptance of responsibility for what appears to have been a misinterpretation, your commentary raises other issues. Continue reading →

A Tip For Victoria Liss—In Fact, Two: Read the Golden Rule, and Don’t Use The Internet For Revenge

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

The right Victoria Liss...I hope!

Victoria Liss was tending bar at Bimbo’s Cantina in Seattle last week, when a customer named Andrew Meyer not only refused to tip her on his $28 bill, he added insult to injury by scrawling on his credit card receipt that she “could stand to lose a few pounds.” Liss, outraged, decided to employ the full power of the internet against the unmannerly cad. She posted a picture of the receipt and the customer’s name, Andrew Meyer, on her Facebook page. 

Soon angry web-Furies were gathering to exact their revenge on Meyer, whom Liss called “yuppie scum.” Andrew Meyer’s photo and Facebook page were located and posted around the web like it was a Post Office wall. News sites, including the Seattle Weekly, the Stranger, Gawker and Jezabel, used the photograph. Soon Andrew Meyer was being flamed by thousands, and receiving vicious e-mails from strangers intent on carrying on Victoria Liss’s vendetta.

One problem: Liss had the wrong Andrew Meyer! The photo she posted was of a different Andrew Meyer who lived in Texas, not Washington, and it is his face and reputation she sent to web perdition. Continue reading →

Ethics Alarms Two Year Report

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

This month marks the second anniversary of Ethics Alarms, and by the end of the week, I will have posted its 2000th article. In that time, the blog has had…

  • Over 500,000 visits
  • 15,687 comments
  • 67, 487 spam comments

In addition, this month will have the most traffic of any month so far, twice as much as a year ago. And…

  • The most commented upon recent post was the contentious “Baby Emma” story, with 121 comments so far.
  • The posts that have been read the most are, yes,  “A Commercial for Liars: Tide..with Acti-lift!”, with “Texas Cheerleading Ethics: Cheer Your Rapist!” close behind. (Maybe I should use exclamation points more often.)
  • The current standings among recent commenters are, in order, tgt, Eric (Erik?) Monkman, Tim LeVier, Chase Martinez, Elizabeth, and Bill, finally pushing Mr. Fusion, who came, annoyed me, and vanished, off the charts.

This is as good a time as any to thank all of you who come here, and especially those who add your own perspective and opinions to the content. That was always the objective in starting the blog—on The Ethics Scoreboard, I usually felt like I was taking to myself— and you have responded magnificently, beyond my expectations. I am proud and honored that the discourse inspired by Ethics Alarms posts  is civil, pointed, well-written, perceptive, funny, and sometimes genuinely eloquent. Ethics is a continuing inquiry, and I have leaned much from all of you, even, and perhaps especially, when you tell me that I am, as my Dad liked to say, “talking through my hat.”

Again, thank you. I am more grateful than I can ever express.

And I will continue to work on those typos.